Simplicity, a word that has come to define the easy way of life, the basic almost archaic way of existing. People often want to travel to “simpler times” such as nostalgia filled grade schools or towns whose streets were written on the back of their hands many moons ago. Times when the world was smaller and less abandoning. But what is often misunderstood about simplicity is its power to craft the most complex of things given vast amounts of time. That brings me to the notion of fractal patterning.
With fractals, simple governing equations create vast arrays and matrixes that seem so complex in design and planned in origin. Most people have seen Mandelbrot fractal pictures or videos, and what’s amazing about these videos and fractals in general is that one simple design is governing the creation of entire systems. The Mandelbrot videos show that one shape is made up of smaller shapes which all resemble the original shape. And what’s making up those smaller shapes is even smaller shapes all the same in structure as the original shape. If this sounds confusing, then an easy way to picture fractal formations is to think of a tree. Here we have a basic structure, a branch diverges into two branches. Then off those branches stem more branches in a bifurcating pattern. These branches are all of the same shape oasthe first branch or the trunk, yet they create these gigantic organisms stretching far into the air. So in this notion, complex structures arise from simple principles and lots of repetitions. It is with this pattern that life emerges, descendants from ancestors in a bifurcating pattern.
Darwin penned this notion in the Origin of Species so accurately that no scientific evidence has ever been able to disprove this notion. From one clade comes another clade comes another clade, all stemming from one original source. Simple changes to one organism may result in speciation forming an entirely new organism. Given enough time these simple changes can add up to produce the most amazing of things. So when you’re on a walk in the woods sometimes, instead of being in awe of the differences between the things you see, be in awe of the similarities between the things you see. For in these similarities and these differences we can see the subtle changes that have produced such varied organisms. Simple changes and vast amounts of time are the creators of our natural world.
